These days, standing in line at the box office to purchase concert tickets is almost unheard of. When you find out your favorite artist is coming to an arena near you, your immediate reaction is most likely to get online and search for the best deal on tickets. However, if it’s been more than maybe two hours since the tickets were made available for purchase online, “the best deal” is probably going to be at least double the face value, depending on the artist’s popularity. A huge percentage of concert tickets are bought by scalpers within the first couple of hours and then resold for up to 10 times the original amount.
Not only are ticket scalping companies themselves purchasing these tickets for resale, but many of them are using computer programs or “bots” that request up to 200,000 tickets a day. They have been used to buy up to 60 percent of the total tickets available for high-demand shows, according to The New York Times.
Zach Brehne, a senior entrepreneurship major, ran into issues buying tickets to a Dave Matthews Band concert this summer due to the short amount of time it took for scalpers to get a hold of them.
“I went online a few hours after the tickets were released, and pretty much all the face value tickets were gone and people were selling them for way more than the original price,” Brehne said. “I ended up getting a lawn ticket which is the furthest away from the stage and doesn’t even provide seating, yet I still had to pay over $100. It’s ridiculous how much they can jack up the prices and get away with it.”
In an attempt to stop scalpers from purchasing so many tickets and selling them at such high prices, some artists and original ticket selling companies are using what is called a restrictive paperless ticket. This kind of ticket can only be used by the person who purchased it. The only way to get it is to go to the venue, show the credit card used to buy the ticket and a photo ID to confirm your identity. Once purchased, these tickets cannot be sold or given to anyone else. While the process may be inconvenient for people who had tickets given to them or paid for by someone else, it guarantees that fans are getting tickets at face value.
“I bought a paperless ticket when I went to a Rihanna concert last year,” said Fedra Cortines, a senior marketing major. “I can see how it would be annoying if the person who purchased the ticket wasn’t the person attending the concert because they are required to be present, but in my case it worked out fine and my ticket was much cheaper than people I knew who didn’t get the paperless one. I think the amount of money you can save outweighs the inconvenience.”
In Honolulu, Hawaii, local fans in Bruno Mars’ home state lined up at the box office to purchase tickets for his Moonshine Jungle tour. However, because the tickets sold out online in just two hours, only 6 percent of those fans were able to get tickets. Not only did so few people actually get tickets, but scalpers are now reselling them online for $446 (over four times the box office price).
In response, Hawaiian Senate President Donna Mercado Kim has introduced The Bruno Mars Act. This resolution proposes that the first 48 hours of ticket sales be during that time, according to an article from Forbes.com.
“I think if the Bruno Mars Act were to be passed, saying that only the box office can sell the tickets for the first 48 hours could definitely help curve the price of tickets, making it much more affordable since they would be selling them at nearly the same price,” said Tadhg Kavanagh, a senior criminology major. “It would be much fairer to the consumers than having to buy them for so much more than they’re worth.”
But is the idea of The Bruno Mars Act a realistic one? Will enough people be willing to physically go to the box offices to buy their tickets, or will the convenience of online purchasing prevail? It’s too soon to say whether or not this act is to be taken seriously enough to produce change restricted to box office purchases only, meaning no tickets would be available online
Sonny Billotte can be reached at sonny.billotte@spartans.ut.edu